Opinion
Curriculum Opinion

Book Review: The Blackboard and the Bottom Line

April 15, 2005 2 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

It’s hardly a surprise that corporate leaders have spent more than a century trying to remake schools in their own companies’ images so that they become more competitive, efficient, and productive. Of course, business has not always lived up to its own standards—think Detroit in the 1970s and Enron in the ’90s. But as education historian Larry Cuban reveals in his captivating new book, this hasn’t stopped businesspeople from insisting that they know best.

BRIC ARCHIVE

After World War I, for instance, industries seeking workers with appropriate skills lobbied for intensive vocational programs; during the 1990s, certain that technology was the answer to everything, companies pushed for computers in every school. These days, they believe that standardization is the answer to our educational woes; so they’ve decreed, along with the federal government, that student test scores should be the bottom line. As Cuban laments, “Now only one kind of ‘good’ district, only one kind of ‘good’ school, and only one kind of ‘good’ teaching is considered correct.”

Cuban is a former high school teacher and district superintendent who’s now a professor emeritus of education at Stanford University, and he, like others of us in the profession, knows that the differences between businesses and schools are immense and often intractable. Those who enter business are driven, Cuban writes, by “love of competition, the rewards of winning, of rising to the top of an organization.” Teachers, on the other hand, bring into the profession “an ideal of serving the young.” While educators do want students to excel academically, they also want to instill good values and encourage creativity and intellectual curiosity. It’s impossible—or should be impossible— to be with young people day after day and not focus on these things.

But don’t businesses also want people of character and innovative capacity? Of course they do. In survey after survey, as Cuban notes, employers say that traits like personality and dependability “trump academic achievements and computer skills.” Ironically, then, business leaders have been promoting a method of training—standardization and testing—that works against their own interests. They’ve been doing this, Cuban suggests, because it’s much easier for government and business to promote monolithic and measurable reforms than those that are more nuanced. That’s why progressive practices, such as portfolios and integrated curricula enriched with art and music, no longer have cachet.

This is not to say that Cuban backs only progressive reforms and is opposed to all testing. What he really wants is “competing views of an appropriate education,” in which progressive and democratically driven schools exist alongside traditional ones. Cuban, in fact, does not want businesses to stay out of education but rather to show a great deal more humility in their involvement. They should stop asking how schools can be more like them and instead consider— especially in this era of rampant corporate corruption—the ways in which it’s OK for schools to be different.

Related Tags:

A version of this article appeared in the May 01, 2005 edition of Teacher Magazine as Books

Events

Ed-Tech Policy Webinar Artificial Intelligence in Practice: Building a Roadmap for AI Use in Schools
AI in education: game-changer or classroom chaos? Join our webinar & learn how to navigate this evolving tech responsibly.
Education Webinar Developing and Executing Impactful Research Campaigns to Fuel Your Ed Marketing Strategy 
Develop impactful research campaigns to fuel your marketing. Join the EdWeek Research Center for a webinar with actionable take-aways for companies who sell to K-12 districts.
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Privacy & Security Webinar
Navigating Cybersecurity: Securing District Documents and Data
Learn how K-12 districts are addressing the challenges of maintaining a secure tech environment, managing documents and data, automating critical processes, and doing it all with limited resources.
Content provided by Softdocs

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Curriculum History Group Finds Little Evidence of K-12 'Indoctrination'
Most social science educators say they keep politics out of the classroom, but need help identifying good curriculum resources
6 min read
Photo of U.S. flag in classroom.
iStock / Getty Images Plus
Curriculum How an International Baccalaureate Education Cuts Through the ‘Noise’ on Banned Topics
IB programs offer students college credit in high school and advanced learning environments.
9 min read
James Minor teaches his IB Language and Literature class at Riverview High School in Sarasota, Fla., on Jan. 23, 2024.
James Minor teaches his IB Language and Literature class at Riverview High School in Sarasota, Fla., on Jan. 23, 2024.
Zack Wittman for Education Week
Curriculum Explainer Social Studies and Science Get Short Shrift in Elementary Schools. Why That Matters
Learn why the subjects play a key role in elementary classrooms—and how new policy debates may shift the status quo.
10 min read
Science teacher assists elementary school student in the classroom
iStock / Getty Images Plus
Curriculum Letter to the Editor Finance Education in Schools Must Be More Than Personal
Schools need to teach students to see how their spending impacts others, writes the executive director of the Institute for Humane Education.
1 min read
Education Week opinion letters submissions
Gwen Keraval for Education Week